An Imposing and Elaborate Establishment

The army's demolition left so little that by the 1920s the fort was faint bumps in a field. When gravel digging threatened the ground in the 1930s it became a state park; it was made a national historic site in 1966, and excavation began in 1968. In December 1985 Congress ordered the fort rebuilt on its own site, and Park Service archeologists spent 1986 to 1988 salvaging what the rebuilding would cover, recovering about a million artifacts. The Bourgeois House reopened as the visitor center in 1987, and the reconstruction was finished in the early 1990s.

What the plaque says

An Imposing and Elaborate Establishment Fort Union, one of the largest and best known trading posts in the American West, was on the Missouri near the mouth of the Yellowstone, about 14 miles southeast of here. Built in 1828, it was the headquarters for the American Fur Company's newly created upper Missouri Outfit. From the fort, the company ruthlessly crushed its opposition while conducting a profitable trade with the Assiniboine, Gros Venres, Mandan, and Blackfeet Indians. Fort Union was a substantial post with stone blockhouses on opposite corners of the stockade, which enclosed the manager's opulent residence, a barracks, warehouses, a powder magazine, and stables. Guests to the remote outpost were comfortably housed, well fed, and lavishly entertained by the company's manager. There was also, however, a dark side to the post. Its history was "a continuous series of conspiracies, family feuds, sieges, pitched battles, drunken brawls, and cold blooded murders." By 1840, the price of furs and hides fell and Fort Union began a long decline. In 1865 the U.S. Army took over the post. Two years later the army dismantled the buildings and moved them across the Missouri to construct Fort Buford.

Where it stands

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